The Hydra Protocol (33 page)

“Okay, satellite’s up. I see . . . I see a couple of things, actually,” she said. He heard her clacking away at a keyboard. “Stand by.”

Chapel dropped the truck into neutral. They were down in the shadow between two dunes, and he could see nothing at all.

The border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan was long and much of it ran through trackless desert. Until recently no one had ever bothered to patrol the dividing line at all. But one of the main drug pipelines that brought opium poppies and refined heroin into Russia ran across this border, in almost a straight shot from Afghanistan. The fence and the border checkpoints north of Tashkent had been built to stop that flow, but of course the drug runners had simply diverted around the obstruction and now they moved most of their product through the Kyzyl Kum. In recent years the Russians had started paying the Kazakhs to keep an eye on their desert frontier to stem that tide. There had been problems—a few farmers who had never even known which country they lived in had been shot while herding their sheep. And plenty of drugs still got through—coverage was still spotty. It was a lot of ground to cover for Kazakhstan’s small military.

But if even one drug interdiction helicopter spotted Chapel’s team, if they fell afoul of even a single man working border patrol, their whole mission would fall apart.

“Okay,” Angel said. “Still working. But you can creep forward a little. The nearest helicopter is twenty miles away from you and heading west.”

Chapel goosed the engine, trying and failing to keep it from roaring as the wheels bit into the dune ahead and started pulling the truck up the long, sweeping face. They were in the most danger at the crests of the dunes, where starlight might glitter on their windows. Chapel hit the top of the dune and raced back down to its bottom.

“Head east for a minute,” Angel said. “Okay, stop. Wait there.”

In the dark Chapel gritted his teeth and waited. He couldn’t see what Angel saw. He couldn’t see anything. He was already exhausted from driving all night, and this anxious game of hide-and-seek made him feel like the bones of his skull were grinding against each other. He glanced over at Nadia and saw her staring out her window, as if she could help by keeping an eye out. The problem was, if they so much as saw the lights of a border patrol unit or heard the chopping noise of a helicopter, they were already dead.

“North. Go now,” Angel said. “Now! Okay, slow down, slower. Head northwest . . . stop. Stop, stop, stop!”

Chapel drove down into the shelter between two dunes and cut his engine.

“Hang tight,” Angel whispered. “There’s a helicopter about three kilometers to your north. That’s just inside their range of vision. Just . . . don’t move. Try not to make any noise, in case they have long-range microphones.”

Chapel all but held his breath. With the engine off, the cab of the truck started to get very cold, very quickly. He looked over and saw Nadia shivering, her lips pressed tightly together.

She was trying to keep her teeth from chattering.

Chapel took his hands off the wheel, as if he might accidentally switch the engine back on and give them away. He held his hands up in the air, almost afraid to put them down in case they made a noise when they hit the upholstery.

He could hear the engine ticking, pinging as it cooled. He could hear a drift of sand come tumbling down the dune in front of him, stirred by the wind. He could hear his own heart beating.

No. No, that tiny sound, softer even than the noise the sand made, that wasn’t his heartbeat. As fast as his pulse was racing, it wasn’t going fast enough to make that sound. It had to be something else. It had to be the sound of the helicopter. Was it getting closer? Was it getting louder, or was he just imagining that?

In the shadow of the dune, the truck’s roof was nearly invisible, but if anyone thought to look at it, it would seem wrong. It was too square, in this country of curving dunes. Someone could see them, someone with night-vision goggles could have spotted them, called for the helicopter to investigate . . . as the helo got closer, its FLIR sensors would pick up their body heat inside the cab, so much warmer than the surrounding sand. Maybe, just maybe there was a chance the helo crew would think they were animals, camels or wild pigs or whatever else lived out here, maybe they would shrug off the heat signature, but more likely they would come closer still, get a better look, and then . . .

“Okay,” Angel said, her voice startlingly loud in the enclosed cab. Even Bogdan jumped, lifting his long neck in the backseat and staring at Chapel and Nadia.

“Okay, give it another minute. Then head due north, and keep going,” Angel told them. “I think you’re clear.”

Abdulla Zokirov had been born in the countryside of Uzbekistan shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. He had never known a time when orders from Moscow shaped every aspect of his life, had never lived under the yoke of atheists far to the north who wished for nothing more than to trample his religion and his ethnic heritage. He had joined the Uzbek armed forces when he was a teenager and then the SNB when he finished his tour of duty and had spent most of his life studying police reports in Tashkent, under the tutelage of the legendary Jamshid Mirza. He had never traveled farther than Bukhara in his life, had never been outside his national borders.

Still, there was inside him an abiding hatred for all ethnic Russians. It was simply part of his DNA.

So when a pale-faced man in a black suit appeared in the dawn light at the entrance to the abandoned poultry shed in the outskirts of Vobkent, Zokirov’s hackles went up right away. Here was some mindless functionary from the frozen north come putting his nose in where it did not belong.

Zokirov removed his latex gloves—he had been examining one of the dead bodies that lay rotting in the cool darkness of the shed—and strode over to tell the Russian he was not welcome, that this was a crime scene and an internal Uzbek matter and he should just go home.

Then he saw the man’s eyes, and he forgot every word he’d meant to say.

Jamshid Mirza—who was now one of those corpses in the dark—had often spoken of the KGB in tones of reverence mixed with utter loathing. He had once been an agent of that now-defunct organization, and he had talked of how they all cultivated a particular look, a stare, a piercing expression they called the Eye of the Dead Fish. It was a look that conveyed a particular message to anyone it fell upon.
You are not a human being
, the stare implied.
You do not have any rights. You will do what I say or I will shoot you without a moment’s hesitation. Even if you do exactly as I say, I may shoot you anyway, and if you beg for your life, you will only disgust me.

It was a lot for one look to say. Abdulla Zokirov had always thought Mirza was being dramatic, when he spoke of the Eye of the Dead Fish. No man could say so much with a single glance.

But this Russian, this man who had intruded on Zokirov’s work, had the Eye. And it spoke volumes.

“These men belonged to me,” the Russian said, kicking the hand of one of corpses. Most of the dead men in the shed were, in fact, Russians. None of them had any identification on their bodies, and Zokirov had been wondering who had sent them here to die. He did not nod or express satisfaction at learning this new fact. “I am Senior Lieutenant Pavel Kalin, of Counter Intelligence,” the Russian said. “I will take over here now.”

It took a moment for Zokirov to realize that Kalin was speaking not in Uzbek but in Russian. Of course Zokirov knew the language—it was a second unofficial tongue of his country, legacy of an age of tyranny. He was a bit ashamed that when he answered, he spoke in Russian, too.

“This one,” Zokirov said, pointing to Mirza, “is ours. It’s clear that he killed some of your men. Most likely because they had no jurisdiction here, and no permits for their weapons.”

Kalin glanced around the shed. There was not much for him to see, Zokirov knew. The bodies, of course, but beyond that only a little stain of oil on the floor. It was still wet, which meant there had been a vehicle there recently, but now it was gone.

“There were three others. A Russian woman, an American, and a Romanian,” Kalin said. He did not seem to have taken the hint about jurisdiction.

“Yes, Svetlana Shulkina, Jeff—”

Kalin clucked his tongue. “Those names mean nothing. They had a vehicle—a large truck, I think.” He bent down and touched the oil stain with two fingers. “I do not know who killed whom here, and I do not care in the least. The ones I want are the ones who fled.” He looked over at one of the corpses, the one that wore spectacles. “Next time I will not send policemen to do the work of soldiers. I will take the bodies of my men. You will not put their deaths in your report. You may do with your dead man as you please, but you will not make any mention that there were Russians here. Am I understood?”

Zokirov was an agent of the SNB. He was accustomed to a certain level of respect from his peers, and from a great measure of fear and obedience from common folk. He straightened his spine and tried to think of what Mirza might have said. “This is an internal matter of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Interfering with a police investigation is an offense, and—”

Kalin stood up very suddenly and slapped Zokirov across the face.

A cold fear washed through Zokirov, a certainty that if Kalin were to kill him in the next moment, there would be no consequences, no repercussions. Zokirov had worked in state security long enough to know that some men were above the law, even international law. Such men did not need papers or clearances to get their way.

He closed his mouth.

Then he opened it again. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am happy to cooperate with your investigation. Let me tell you our theory. Our man, Mirza, confronted your agents here and killed them. The three you are looking for then killed Mirza. They departed in a large desert-going truck, and we believe they are headed for—”

“I know exactly where they are going,” Kalin said.

Zokirov did not ask him to share this information.

It was cold out there. Even in the middle of the desert, even after a long day of the sun baking the sands without relief. It was cold—nearly freezing.

It was empty, empty in an enormous way. The desert was not lifeless, not by any means. Through the windshield Chapel could see a landscape painted silver by the moon and dotted sparsely with scrub grass and tiny bushes all the way to the horizon. Once or twice the truck startled a lizard or a small mammal out of its burrow and sent it scampering for cover in the cold sand. But these exceptions only served to highlight just how little there was out there, just how much of nothing the truck rumbled through. No roads. No sign of human life at all. No trees, anywhere. No clouds overhead. No mountains, no hills, and definitely no water.

Only the dunes. The endless barchan dunes, rises where the wind had sculpted the sand into gentle soft shapes that could run for miles in either direction. Dunes furrowed by moving air, with a constant spray feathering from their tops. Dunes that looked like moving waves in the dark, like swells in an endless sea.

Chapel found himself glancing over at Nadia time and again, at her sleeping face lit a quiet green by the dashboard lights. Just to see something human, something on a scale he felt comfortable with. He was glad she was there.

In the backseat, behind Chapel, Bogdan snored and whimpered in his sleep, like a beaten dog. After a while Chapel was even glad for that noise, that human noise.

Chapel braked to a gentle stop in the dark lee between two dunes. He let the truck settle, let it slide around a little on the loose sand. Listened to its engine idling away. He rubbed at his face with his hands. Drank a little water.

He touched Nadia’s shoulder and she opened one eye. In the dark cab of the truck, she stared at him as if she didn’t recognize him, as if she had no idea where she was.

“Your turn,” he whispered.

She sat up, one side of her face obscured by the shadow of her hair.
“Chto?”
she asked. Then she shook her head and sat up much straighter, looking forward through the windshield. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry. My turn.” She tried to stifle a yawn, but failed. She squeezed her eyes shut, hard, then opened them again.

“Never mind,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I can keep driving for a while.”

She turned to face him. “No. It is my duty. I don’t shirk.”

He started to protest but he could see in her face she fully intended to take her shift. They switched places, which involved a certain amount of awkward crawling over each other. She said nothing and didn’t act embarrassed or uncomfortable. Chapel kept his own feelings to himself.

She put the truck in gear and got them moving again. Chapel knew he ought to try to get some sleep, but he was still too dazed, too hypnotized by the desert outside the windows to close his eyes. He drank some more water and watched the dunes go by.

Traveling during the day was just too dangerous. Besides, they were all exhausted and desperately needed some sleep. Nadia parked the truck in the lee of a tall dune that would give them shade for most of the day. Chapel jumped out with a shovel and spread some sand across the dark roof of the truck. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but any satellites or helicopters overhead would be less likely to see them. Working with Nadia, he hung tarps across the windows of the cab and then they crawled back inside. The interior of the cab was dim, lit up only by some orange light, those few sunbeams already strong enough to pierce the thick canvas. The night’s chill lingered in the air, in the metal surfaces all around Chapel. He sank down onto the seat that had been tormenting him all night and suddenly it felt very, very comfortable.

“There’s a tent, back in the supplies,” Nadia told him. “I think I am too tired to put it up, though.”

“I’m too tired to keep talking about this,” he replied.